Understanding the Limitations of the SAT

The Tax Administration Service (SAT) offers two main methods to download your Digital Tax Receipts over the Internet (CFDIs), but both have important restrictions:

• Mass Download Portal (WebService):

  • This service is designed for efficient downloads of large volumes of CFDIs.
  • However, the SAT limits this service to the last 5 years of tax history. This means that, regardless of how long you have been issuing or receiving CFDIs, you will only be able to access data from the last 5 years through this method.
  • The main advantage is speed and efficiency, ideal for quickly obtaining the most recent data.

• Traditional SAT Portal:

  • This is the portal you usually use to consult and download individual CFDIs.
  • It provides access to your entire CFDI history, regardless of age.
  • The key disadvantage is the limit imposed by the SAT of 2,000 CFDIs per day. This can make downloading large volumes of data a very lengthy process.

Strategy to Download 10 Years of History with bFiskur

To overcome these limitations and obtain your CFDIs from the last 10 years, bFiskur combines both download methods, below you will find the steps you need to follow to obtain your downloads.

1. Initial Setup:

   • The first step is to configure bFiskur to request the download of the last 10 years of CFDIs. This indicates to the system the total scope of the information you need.

     1. Request help via email soporte@bitam.com to make this configuration. The system only allows you to change this value for the last 5 years, so it is necessary for us to make this configuration on our side. You must specify the RFC for which you want to download more than 5 years of history and the year from which you want to start the download (e.g. 2019)

1. Download of the Last 5 Years (WebService):

   • bFiskur will use the SAT's mass download service to obtain the 5 most recent years of CFDIs.
   • It is recommended to perform this download by individual years. This helps to organize the data and minimize possible errors or interruptions.

   • To learn how you can create a task to download data from Web Services, follow these steps

     1. Open utilities -> download log

     2. Add a task using the button (+), use the following parameters

        1. Company. Select the company for which you want to download these CFDIs
        2. Start Date. Enter the start date of the range from which you want to download data, the ranges should not exceed 1 year. For example, if you want to download all of 2022, enter January 1, 2022 in this field.
        3. End Date. Enter the end date of the range from which you want to download data, the ranges must not exceed 1 year. For example, if you want to download all of 2022, enter December 31, 2022 in this field. 
        4. Process type: Load Data (this is the value to indicate to bFiskur to perform a download using the SAT's bulk download Web Service.
   • Repeat these steps as many times as necessary to download the information from the last 5 years

2. Download the Previous 5 Years (Web Scraping):

   • For the remaining 5 years, you can have bFiskur use the Web Scraping technique. This means that the software will simulate human interaction with the traditional SAT portal, navigating through the pages and downloading the CFDIs.
   • First, calculate the volume of CFDIs to download and determine what the appropriate date range is to download so as not to exceed the limit of 2000 CFDIs per day, this value will help you in the next step to know what date range you should use. 

   • To learn how to perform a web scraping task, follow these steps:

     1. open utilities -> download log

     2. Add a task using the button (+), use the following parameters

        1. Company. Select the company for which you want to download these CFDIs
        2. Start Date. Enter the start date of the range from which you want to download data, the ranges must not generate a download greater than 2000 CFDIs per day. For example, if you want to download all of January 2022, enter January 1, 2022 in this field.
        3. End Date. Enter the start date of the range from which you want to download data, the ranges must not generate a download greater than 2000 CFDIs per day. For example, if you want to download all of January 2022, enter January 31, 2022 in this field. . 
        4. Process type: Web Scraping Issued or Web Scraping Received (this is the value to indicate to bFiskur to perform a download using Web Scraping, keep in mind that in the case of Web Scraping you can request only issued or only received, not so in the Web Service.
   • Repeat these last steps as many times as necessary.

   • Important Considerations for Web Scraping:

     1. Daily Limit: Remember the limit of 2,000 CFDIs per day. bFiskur will respect this limit, so downloading large volumes of data may take several days or weeks. If your download exceeds the limit of 2000 daily it will simply mark an error and you will have to wait until the next day to try again (this is because by trying to download more than the daily limit you exhausted the number of CFDIs that can be extracted).
     2. Download Time: Web Scraping is a slower process than bulk downloading. The speed will depend on the number of CFDIs and the response speed of the SAT portal.
     3. Shared Limitss: The limit of 2,000 CFDIs is shared between bFiskur and your manual downloads. If you download CFDIs manually, you will reduce the limit available for bFiskur, and vice versa.

Final Recommendations

• Planning: Given the nature of the process, plan your downloads in advance. If you have a large volume of CFDIs, spread the downloads over several days or weeks.
• Monitoring: Monitor the progress of the downloads in bFiskur. Make sure there are no interruptions or errors.
• Periodic Updates: Consider doing periodic downloads of your most recent CFDIs to keep your information updated and avoid having to download large volumes of data all at once.